We Run the Tides(31)

I change out of my uniform into my best black jeans. I tie a black sweater around my waist as a makeshift belt. I pick out a blue long-sleeve with a big button at the top. Good, I think, glancing at the mirror on the back of my door. I don’t glance too hard, just enough to think it looks nice. Closer examination, I have learned, is not my ally. I place Band-Aids on my ankles to prepare for the pulling on of my Doc Martens, which have not been sufficiently worn in yet. Doc Martens are for evenings and weekends. They are not permitted at Spragg.

I walk to California Street to take the first of two buses to the used record store I like. I hope to see Keith on his skateboard but he’s not there. I wait for the bus and then take it for four blocks before I decide to get a transfer ticket from the bus driver. It’s not a bus with boys. I hold my transfer in my hand and wait fifteen minutes for the next one. It’s worth the wait. On this bus I see Axel Wallenberg. He doesn’t know me, but I know who he is because he’s Swedish, too—our moms know each other. Axel Wallenberg, I have decided, is a deep, beautiful boy.

While his beauty is obvious, his depth may not be immediately evident. But I’m sure it’s there because I know a secret about his family. I’ve been obsessed with Raoul Wallenberg ever since I wrote an essay on him last year in seventh grade. He helped save hundreds of Jews in World War II by traveling from Sweden to Hungary and providing Jews with fake Swedish passports. But then in 1945 the KGB in Russia imprisoned him. The Russians say he was executed in 1947 but his body was never found, and I’m not sure I believe them. A lot of people don’t. I personally suspect that Axel Wallenberg, who’s currently on the 1 California bus with me, is his grandson.

We switch buses at Presidio and take the 43 to the Haight. Axel and his friends are in the back of the bus and I’m seated in the middle. I have to make sure to turn the pages of The Unbearable Lightness of Being so it looks like I’m actually reading the book, in case anyone’s checking, which they are not. I’m focused on the boys’ conversation, which is now about Maria Fabiola. More interesting to me is the fact that Axel is talking about how he’s going to go to the party to welcome her back.

“You should totally spike whatever they’re serving,” one of his friends says.

“Yeah,” says the other friend, the one with the longer hair. “You should spike the punch.”

As we near Haight, I look out the window and see a girl with mousy hair wearing a pink fur jacket, round glasses, and bell-bottoms. She’s talking to two much older men, one with high heel boots. The other man is wearing a brown leather jacket and a beanie.

“Check it out,” one of Axel’s friends says. “There’s that freak who was swinging naked from the monkey bars.”

The other boys look out the window. “Fucking Chelsea morning,” Axel’s other friend says.

“She’s so messed up,” Axel says. “But I feel bad for her. Her mom abandoned her and went to Africa.”

India, I want to say. But I don’t want them to know I’ve been listening to their conversation.

When we get to Haight, we all get off the bus. The boys go left, where shops sell pipes, and, near the park, dealers sell pot. I turn to the right, toward the bigger stores. I pass a few high-school dropouts with dogs. You can tell they went to fancy summer camps at some point—they still have those sailing bracelets yellowed and rotting away on their wrists—and now they’re sitting outside stores, asking for money.

The record store is filled with guys, all of them about five years older than me. I only see one other girl buying records, but she’s with her boyfriend. I flip through the used records and can’t find what I’m looking for, so I have to go to the NEW section. And there it is—the Psychedelic Furs. There are two records. No, three. I don’t know which to get. I decide I can only afford one. Svea’s birthday is coming up in March and I need to save the rest of my money to buy her something that I’ll find deep in her closet a week later.

I choose the most recent record, with the image of a man with reddish hair in a blue tuxedo jacket. I hold it between my hands like it’s the face of someone I love.

The balding guy at the cash register with the ironic? Blondie shirt nods when I give him the album. “Cool choice,” he says, and I don’t say anything because thanks doesn’t seem like the right response. I try to make my eyes say Of course. Then I carry my bright yellow record bag down the street, taking care to not swing my arms so it doesn’t hit anybody.

I pass a mannequin in a storefront window wearing a dress that’s black with tiny white polka dots. Impulsively, I enter the shop.

Two willowy women work at the store. One of them is wearing a scarlet bow tie, the other a pencil skirt with a bronze zipper that runs all the way down the front. “The dress in the window . . .” I start to say.

“Oh, that would look fabulous on you,” says the woman in the bow tie.

“That’s our only one,” says the woman with the zipper skirt. “I’ll take it off the mannequin.”

She approaches the window and removes the mannequin. For a moment she and the mannequin are engaged in an awkward dance. Then the woman lays the mannequin on the floor of the shop and starts to unbutton the bodice of the dress. It looks like she’s about to perform CPR. The inert form, I can’t help but notice, looks remarkably like me. The bow-tied woman observes this as well. “The mannequin looks a little like you,” she says.